If you have an interest in these things, it is probably worth looking at the whole article: https://slate.com/technology/2019/05...=recirc_recent. Apologies if this is already under discussion, but if it is then I missed it when I scanned the first two pages.Representatives from NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the European Space Agency, the U.N., and other international space experts have gathered in College Park, Maryland, this week to do a cosmic fire drill. The premise of this role-play universe begins with an imaginary asteroid called 2019 PDC, which has a 1 in 100 chance of striking Earth in 2027. According to NASA, those odds were selected for this drill because experts worldwide generally agree that that’s the threshold for when we should take collective action.
For added fun, consider one of the related problems that was raised during the exercise:
I'm too far out of the loop to have much more than an ongoing interest in this, although I suppose that it may well become the scenario for the next big New Year movie here. What are your thoughts on this, particularly given that they're starting to discover how many other things might go wrong?My favorite question came from an attendee who has clearly seen his share of action movies: “How big would [the asteroid] need to be to pop the cork on Yellowstone?” The scientists onstage didn’t seem to immediately understand his question, so the attendee went on to explain that an impact could destabilize the Wyoming supervolcano. “We have not considered volcanic impacts,” replied one of the scientists. “Well,” the attendee said, “maybe it’s something to take a look at.”